“Velaya” was very much inspired by Lord Dunsany, who was a writer of quirky little fantasies in the pre-Tolkien era. I had been fooling around with different voices and styles in my writing, and thought Dunsany’s high, Biblical language would be interesting to mimic. Of course, what you set out to do is never quite what you do do, which is true for the protagonist of my story as well.

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